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Project management certification · every figure dated

Read the rule from the body that wrote it

Four ways to be eligible, drawn to scale

Each bar is the experience PMI requires at that level of education. They all finish on the same day: the day you apply.

  1. Upper-secondary schoolhigh school, GED or equivalent

    60 months

  2. Associate or vocationalshort-cycle tertiary

    48 months

  3. Bachelor's or higheror bachelor-equivalent

    36 months

  4. GAC-accredited degreePMI Global Accreditation Center

    24 months

  5. 35 training hoursrecorded whenever they were earned

    35 hours

Experience only counts if it falls inside PMI’s 10 years before the application, and overlapping projects are counted once. Read from PMI’s PMP certification page and its July 2026 exam content outline on 24 September 2026.
What counts for the 35 hoursWhat PMI actually charges

Eligibility · training hours · exam format · renewal · what is and is not published

Project-management certification is sold by people who summarise the rules. Baselined copies the rules out of PMI’s own pages instead, dates every one, and shows you where the summaries have drifted.

The guides

All guides →

PMP Salary: What the Only Two Credible Sources Actually Say

PMI reports $135,000 for certified professionals. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports $102,320 for the occupation. Neither number is the value of the certificate, and subtracting them is the most common mistake on this topic.

Aug 19, 2026 →

Agile Certifications Compared: PMI-ACP, CSM and the One We Can’t Price

Agile credentials differ less in content than in how you get in and what keeps them alive. Here is PMI-ACP against Scrum Alliance’s CSM on published rules — and an honest account of the one whose page would not load for us.

Aug 16, 2026 →

PMP Practice Exams: What They Can and Cannot Tell You

PMI publishes no passing score and no pass rate, so no practice exam can tell you that you are ready. Here is what they are genuinely good for, what the real exam is made of now, and why exam dumps end certifications.

Aug 12, 2026 →

Free Project Management Certifications: What “Free” Really Buys

No recognised project management certification is free, because every issuing body charges to assess you. Plenty of genuinely free training exists, and some of it counts towards PMI’s 35 hours. Here is the honest line between the two.

Aug 8, 2026 →

Best Project Management Certifications: Chosen by What You Can Enter

There is no single best project management certification, only the one whose entry rules you meet and whose name your market reads. Here are the credentials worth considering, compared on the requirements their issuing bodies publish.

Aug 3, 2026 →

Why a site whose whole job is checking the source

Because the rules moved and a lot of pages did not. PMI publishes its eligibility requirements, its exam format and its training rules on pages anyone can open, and it revised several of them in 2026. On 24 September 2026 we opened two large training providers’ PMP pages and compared their summaries with PMI’s. One had the wrong experience window. The other listed half the eligibility routes.

Neither was lying. Both were out of date, which on a page that people plan a year of their life around amounts to the same thing. So every rule on this site names the PMI document it came from and the day we read it, and where PMI publishes nothing, this site says so rather than borrowing a number from someone who guessed.

Four routes in, and they are not equal

PMI accepts four combinations of education and experience for the PMP, and the difference between them is years of your life. Finish upper-secondary school and you need 60 months of leading projects. An associate’s degree or a recognised vocational qualification brings it down to 48 months. A bachelor’s degree or higher, 36 months. A degree from a programme accredited by PMI’s own Global Accreditation Center, 24 months.

All four then need the same 35 hours of project-management training, and all four count only experience from the 10 years before you apply. Overlapping projects are counted once: PMI’s own worked example adds a January-to-March project and a February-to-May project and gets five months, not seven.

The date that changes what you can buy

From 1 December 2026, a live, instructor-led PMP class only satisfies the training requirement if it is taught by a PMI Authorized Training Partner, a China Registered Education Provider, or an eligible accredited higher-education programme. Self-paced courses are untouched, and so is the employer training you may already have on record.

That one line reorganises the training market, and it is the reason the money page on this site is about which hours PMI will accept rather than which course is prettiest. If you are buying a live class that starts after that date, the provider’s status is no longer a nice-to-have.

What PMI does not publish, and what we do about it

There is no public PMP exam fee. PMI’s handbook says fees vary by membership status and region, and its certification page says you pay only once your application is accepted. There is no published pass rate and no published passing score either — PMI says the standard is set by psychometric analysis against what a qualified project manager should know.

Every page that quotes you a precise exam fee or a pass rate is quoting something other than PMI. This site quotes the prices PMI does print — membership, its own prep course, its question bank, the reschedule penalty — draws them on one chart, and leaves the exam fee as an empty bar. An empty bar is uncomfortable to look at. It is also the truth.

Questions people ask first

What are the PMP certification requirements?
One of four education-and-experience combinations, plus 35 hours of training. PMI's own PMP page lists them as upper-secondary school with 60 months of leading projects, an associate or vocational qualification with 48 months, a bachelor's degree or higher with 36 months, or a degree from a PMI Global Accreditation Center programme with 24 months. That experience has to fall inside the 10 years before you apply, and overlapping projects count once, not twice. Read from PMI on 24 September 2026.
What training counts towards the 35 hours?
More than most people expect, and slightly less than it used to. PMI's July 2026 exam content outline accepts an Authorized Training Partner, a China Registered Education Provider, a Global Accreditation Center programme, a project-management course from an accredited higher-education institution, an employer's own programme, a training company, or a self-paced on-demand course that ends in an assessment. Books and practice exams on their own are explicitly not accepted, and from 1 December 2026 a live, instructor-led class only counts if the teacher is an Authorized Training Partner, a China REP or an accredited institution.
How much does the PMP exam cost?
PMI does not publish the figure. Its certification handbook says fees are subject to membership status and regional pricing, and the PMP page says you pay only once the application is accepted, so there is no public price to quote. What PMI does publish is the surrounding cost: individual membership at USD $139 a year, its own 35-hour prep course at USD $699 for members and USD $799 otherwise, PMI Study Hall Essentials at USD $59 renewing quarterly, and a USD $70 charge for rescheduling inside 30 days of your appointment.
What is the PMP pass rate?
There is no published pass rate, and any site quoting one is quoting itself. PMI says its passing score is set by psychometric analysis against the standard expected of a qualified project manager, and it does not release a percentage of candidates who pass. Training providers advertise very high pass rates for their own students; those are marketing claims with no audited source behind them, so you will not find one repeated here.
Should you apply for the CAPM or the PMP?
The CAPM if you have not led projects yet, the PMP if you have. The CAPM asks only for a secondary school qualification, an age of at least 18, and 23 hours of project management education; the PMP asks for years of leading projects on top of 35 training hours. There is a practical bonus to taking the CAPM first: an active CAPM waives the PMP's 35-hour training requirement outright, which is worth knowing before you pay for a prep course twice.